


Long Nights and Daydreams

by SOMETHINREAL



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, M/M, Making Out, Smoking, edgy! johnny, soft! edgy! ten
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 13:17:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14213976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SOMETHINREAL/pseuds/SOMETHINREAL
Summary: Now, Johnny’s still smiling at him, asking, “light my cigarette?” and leaning down to Chittaphon’s height.(alternatively: johnny tastes like strawberries and cigarettes and ten can't get enough.)





	Long Nights and Daydreams

**Author's Note:**

> yes this is kinda based off of strawberries and cigarettes by troye sivan and im not even sorry but i love nct and johnten thats all + don't smoke lol that's bad !! also i stole inspiration from a moodboard that tumblr user leetaehan made and !! i can't link it because i don't fucking know how computers work but please check out the mood because it made me so happy (side note this is incredibly unbeta’d because I’m lazy and if I reread my work I hate it so please ignore any spelling/grammatical errors)
> 
> now available in russian! https://ficbook.net/readfic/6776374

Chittaphon doesn’t know exactly how he got here. Maybe he does. Maybe it’s that he can’t exactly pinpoint where it all started. Orientation day of ninth grade. Math class. Behind the school buses in the parking lot. He can’t determine out of which of all of their meetups that could have led to this, but right now he’s eighteen years old and climbing down the roof of his house at eleven fifty-three to meet Johnny Seo. It’s crazy now that he’s thinking about it. It shouldn’t be, because he does this at least once a week when they aren’t drinking overpriced shitty coffee in that one hipster cafe two subway stops from Johnny’s place or really good cheap coffee a stoplight away from Chittaphon’s, that, or smoking behind the bleachers at their old school. This has just become their thing. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll take the thrill away from it though.

Johnny is standing by the bush with an unlit cigarette between his lips and a leather jacket hugging his shoulders. He’s nineteen with a smoking habit and a taste for strawberry lollipops, which are supposed to be helping him cut the smoking, but now he’s just picked up a habit of alternating between both. He doesn’t help Chittaphon hop down from the roof like he usually does, just kinda stands back with an amused smile as Chittaphon struggles not to jump onto the car and set off the alarm. He narrows his eyes at Johnny once he gets down safely and begins to walk over.

They’ve known each other since Chittaphon’s ninth grade orientation at the small high school in nowheresville California. (Or, respectively, east of Albany. But it feels like nowheresville sometimes.) Johnny had volunteered to (rather, was _voluntold_ to) show the freshman around the school, but ended up ditching the rest of the kids and just took Chittaphon around because he was wearing an M83 t-shirt and, _that band is sick, dude_. Little did Chittaphon know, Johnny Seo was one of the _cool_ kids. Or, he was as cool as a fifteen year old with a premature smoking habit and a liking for indie bands could be in the social construct that is high school cliques. He was one of the cool bad kids that never did their homework and somehow still got straight eighties, had everyone lusting after them even when they were just sitting around talking about useless things, like what language animals think in.

Chittaphon was none of these things in middle school. He was weird because he liked indie bands, not praised for it. And he always did his homework, and people were definitely not lusting after him. But, because he had now gained the title of Johnny Seo’s Unofficial Best Friend, he was, by default, a cool kid too. This meant a lot of things for him. Narrowing it down to three points: one, he had an image to keep up. Two, this meant that he had to interact with the other Cool People. And three, there was no way in hell that he’d ever be able to mention the fact that he’s incredibly queer to Johnny. Fuck, being a Cool Kid was a lot harder than he’d thought it was going to be.

Over his years of high school, he learned some things about his situation too. Narrowing _that_ down to three points: one, the Cool People were actually pretty cool people. Not the bitchy, mean, bullying type of Cool People he’d always read about and seen on film, but those who liked the same music as him and had good political opinions, both of which were a plus. Two, there was no part for him to play. He didn’t have to act like a cool person around them in order to seem like a Cool Person, they simply thought he was cool enough as is, which was a total shock to the system. Three, with his friends gone (being a year older and all), he was there to make some new cool friends. And he did. But now that college has rolled around he’s gotta leave them too. One additional point: Chittaphon did not have to hide the fact that he’s incredibly queer from Johnny, because as it turned out, Johnny was incredibly queer too. This was totally a mega plus for him.

Now, Johnny’s still smiling at him, asking, “light my cigarette?” and leaning down to Chittaphon’s height. The lighter he pulls from the pocket of his hoodie is red and scratched from being tossed around too much, but it says _we will live_ on it with a little _JS_ at the bottom. Two things Chittaphon has learned about Johnny over the past three years: he’s a sucker for edgy lyrics and he likes marking his territory. Add that to the list of the thousands of other things that Chittaphon has learned over the years and you could probably piece yourself together a short novel.

Johnny is the type of person that would be the main character of some indie novel written by some unknown author that writes better than what’s featured in the New York Times. He’s so complex, got so many little things about him that you wouldn’t be able to completely understand him even if you tried with all of your might. Trust him, Chittaphon has been for years and even he still doesn’t get Johnny all the time. He’s got that sort of basic misunderstood bad boy vibe to him but if you dig deeper you can see that he’s so much more than that; that there’s so much more than what’s on the surface.

They walk with their arms linked together; Johnny blowing smoke rings and Chittaphon watching them dissipate into the night air. They’re quiet, they usually are, until Chittaphon pipes up and asks where they’re heading to tonight.

“I was thinking the bridge,” Johnny tells him. Chittaphon runs the idea through his mind; the bridge has been one of the spots they frequent since they found out about it one day a while back running just because they felt like it, not caring about where their feet took them. They go there together or individually, whatever the night calls for, when they need to think or smoke or just get away for a little bit. Chittaphon likes it there a lot more than he likes it anywhere else.

“I think that you were thinking right, Seo.”

  
  
  


The air is crisp and cool, silent, apart from the soft sound of rushing water beneath where they sit on the small bridge. They’re warm there together, thighs pressed together, Johnny’s arm over his shoulders. Goosebumps raise to his skin for more reasons than one. Johnny is eating a strawberry sucker like he usually does after he smokes, whether to rid the taste from his mouth or just so he can say that he’s taking steps in trying to quit, Chittaphon has never been quite sure. He’s already finished the one that Johnny had given him, now he’s just chewing on the plastic stick because he knows that there’s no trash bin in sight and if he put it in his pocket he’ll forget it in there and then his mother will murder him when she goes to fold the laundry that he’d put in for her.

“What are you thinking about?” Johnny asks him. It’s like he can see through Chittaphon, even if he’s only having an internal battle over what he should do with his candy stick.

“It’s ridiculous and not important,” Chittaphon tells him, because he knows that Johnny probably won’t care about his dilemma anyways. Johnny tucks his hair behind his ear and tilts his head in a way that’s questioning, but doesn’t pry further, knowing Chittaphon and his nonsensical dilemmas.

“You’re ridiculous, Ten,” he says, using the stupid nickname he’d made up on Chittaphon’s third day of high school. ( _“What’s your favourite number?”_ he’d asked, to which Chittaphon replied, _“Ten.”_ Johnny then proceeded to count out on all ten of his fingers before jumping up and exclaiming, _“You’ve got ten letters in you name too. That settles it, your new name is Ten, because your real name is super long and unnecessary.”_ ) “But you’re very important,” he adds.

“Thanks,” Chittaphon says, but he rolls his eyes. Johnny flicks him in the forehead.

“That was a genuine compliment, you shit. Take my love. It’s not easily given.”

“Duly noted. I accept your love, John.” He looks up from where his gaze had settled on his and Johnny’s feet, the ground beneath them, the fall of the leaves signifying the beginning of Autumn. Johnny’s staring at him, Chittaphon isn’t really sure if Johnny even realizes it, but he swears to _god_ he can feel a kiss where Johnny’s eyes fall on his lips.

  
  


It’s dark and rainy when Johnny calls him. It’s been about a week or so since they last saw each other in person, with Johnny having classes and all, and Chittaphon being lazy and not leaving his parent’s house, so he expects a request to hang out at the least. He doesn’t expect what he gets though.

“Are you home?” Johnny asks him as soon as he picks up.

“What if I’m not?” Chittaphon asks, like he’s not just getting out of bed to throw on a nicer pair of jeans to go with his pastel hoodie.

“We’ll have an underpaid driver. Hurry up and get your ass out here because the meter is running and I only have a limited supply of cash on me.” That’s enough to have Chittaphon out the door. He shoots some excuse at his parents, that he’s unexpectedly been invited out, and heads towards the car at the end of his driveway.

When he gets in the cab (a cab!), he climbs in the back with Johnny, smiles at him as he clicks in his seatbelt. Johnny tells the cabbie that they can go. He looks like he usually does: black jeans, dark eyes, long hair, leather jacket, but there’s something different, better about him today that Chittaphon can’t quite point out.

“What’s with the cab?” Chittaphon asks him, “are we doing something special?”

“I mean unless you call going to my apartment to gorge on scary amounts of junk food and instant ramen special, then no, we’re not. I thought we would ride in style today.” Yes, as stylish as a 2011 yellow-painted Ford Focus can be.

“It takes at least an hour and a half to get to your apartment, that’s not to count for all of the traffic. Why on earth did you think that taking a taxi was a good idea, Johnny?” Chittaphon narrows his eyes at him, but he still smiles anyhow.

“My god, excuse me for wanting something more glamorous than the subway, Ten.”

The driver is playing some eighties music that Chittaphon knows the lyrics to off by heart but won’t embarrass him in singing. Johnny is staring out the window; the raindrops are rolling down the tinted glass. It’s getting dark, so all that Chittaphon can see from either side is a fuzzy glow where the city lights shine through the window. They’re stuck in traffic, which Chittaphon had called, and he’s half ready to whip out the twenties he’s shoved in his back pocket before leaving to give to Johnny because he knows the bill for this ride is going to be excruciating.

Johnny looks really good like this; with the strands of his fading black hair falling into his face no matter how hard he tries to tuck them behind his ears, lips wrapped around the stick of a sucker, eyes focused on the world outside. Scratch that-- Johnny always looks good (even when he doesn’t). It’s like he doesn’t even need to try.

Chittaphon doesn’t recognize it at first, but his heart feels like it’s going to explode when he does. Johnny’s fingers walk his own between their thighs in the middle seat, wandering his overturned palm until their fingers are linked. His hands are warm and big, much bigger than Chittaphon’s, welcoming, _he likes it_. He turns his head to the window so that when Johnny looks over he can’t see the colour on his cheeks. He’s not sure if Johnny had done it with any meaning behind it or not, but it doesn’t matter. Maybe it should matter, Chittaphon doesn’t know. All he does know that this does not help the big whopping crush he’s had on Johnny since tenth grade.

  
  


When they arrive at Johnny’s apartment, located impressively in downtown Sacramento, the rain has stilled to a light drizzle and the city is still buzzing beneath their feet. The cab ride turns out to be nearly a hundred dollars ($100!), so Chittaphon shoves the few twenty dollar bills he had in his pockets into the cabbie’s hands before Johnny can protest. He tells him that he can pay the balance and runs to the overhang before he gets too wet for comfort. Johnny follows, throws his lolly stick into the bin by the stairs, tosses his hair out of his eyes.

As soon as they make it upstairs, Johnny raids his cabinets and shoves the most junk Chittaphon has ever seen in his arms. He looks up at Johnny, bewildered by the silent force, eyes widened in confusion.

“Did you think I was kidding?” he asks, and reaches to the very back of the top shelf to grab a bag of marshmallows. He puts those into Chittaphon’s arms too, the food now stacked up to the bridge of his nose, so only his eyes can be seen. “Ten, I never joke about junk food. You know me by now. Go throw it on the coffee table or something. I’ll be out with drinks in a second.”

He does as told, tossing the miscellaneous snacks down on the cheap IKEA table that’s got water rings on it from all of the mugs of coffee Johnny drinks. He flops on the couch with an exaggerated huff, stretching out his limbs and rolling his head over the arm of the couch that doesn’t match the rest of Johnny’s furniture but somehow still holds the place together. Chittaphon’s slept here more times than he can count.

Johnny comes in after a minute, holding a can of coke and an orange juice box, wearing a knowing grin. He tosses the juice box to Chittaphon, placing his can of coke on the table, then shucks off his leather jacket and throws it behind him somewhere, leaving him in nothing but a black t-shirt and his jeans. He pushes Chittaphon’s legs off of the couch and falls down onto it with a huff of  “move it, little guy.”

“I’m tired though,” Chittaphon grumbles, so Johnny lets him drape his legs over his lap, because it’s Chittaphon and did anyone really expect him to do anything else? “Thank you, Johnny,” he says with a grin, drawing out Johnny’s name.

“Yeah, yeah,” Johnny drawls, “you’re lucky you’re cute, Chittaphon.”

Chittaphon gasps dramatically. “Did you just one, use my real name, and two, call me cute willingly? What alternate universe did I end up in? Was that a taxi cab from Heaven?”

“Can it, or I’ll revoke my statement about your cuteness. Also, yes. While ‘Ten’ is short and crisp, ‘Chittaphon’ is refreshing to hear every once in a while. If being called by your own name bothers you so much I’ll just have to call you something else, then.” Chittaphon just pokes him with his socked toe.

“Marvel/DC marathon or rom-com/action marathon?” he asks, and reaches over for the remote so he can switch on the TV.

“Up to you, _sweetcheeks_.”

  


They go for a rom-com/action marathon because Chittaphon doesn’t know if he can handle mildly attractive-mildy stupid superheroes fighting justice tonight. Johnny is okay with the choice, luckily, and they’re halfway through Clueless and halfway through the large pepperoni Johnny’d ordered them, nearly all the way through all of the snacks Johnny had somehow managed to store in his below average sized kitchen. Chittaphon is sorta halfway on top of Johnny, with his legs still over Johnny’s lap and Johnny’s arm around his shoulders, but their position is so normal that it doesn’t even phase them.

“What are you thinking about?” Johnny asks, and Chittaphon can tell that he’s staring but he doesn’t take his eyes off of the TV.

“About how Cher’s gonna find out pretty soon that Christian is totally into dick,” he quips, then laughs to himself. Poor Cher. “At least she ends up with her hunky yet dorky step-brother young Paul Rudd. Actually, scratch that. That’s like, borderline incest. What the fuck, the nineties.”

“Don’t lie, you wish you were in her place,” Johnny accuses, but he’s right, so does it even count as an accusation?

“I mean who wouldn’t want to bang nineties Paul Rudd? Those eyes, man. Those fucking _eyes_.”

“What about _my_ eyes, hmm?” Johnny asks jokingly, but Chittaphon turns and looks to him seriously.

“Your eyes?” Johnny nods. “They don’t stand a chance to Paul Rudd’s. Sorry, John, you’re out.”

“But _I’m_ hot. He’s like, _fifty_. Your thoughts are so shitty.” Chittaphon pokes Johnny with his toes repeatedly as if it’ll make his tiny crush on nineties Paul Rudd any more acceptable and viewable in the eyes of another. Johnny just scoffs at him.

“Yeah, but in the movie he was like, twenty five. You know what? Fine, if my thoughts are shitty, what are _you_ thinking about?”

It gets quiet for a moment, as if Johnny has to think about what he’s thinking about, as if it’s not just going to be some stupid statement about better looking characters in the film or how Chittaphon’s feet smell even though they don’t.

“Honestly?” he asks, and Chittaphon nods. “I’m thinking about kissing you.”

Oh. _Oh_ . That’s definitely not what Chittaphon was anticipating. It’s not like _he’s_ never thought about it before, because he has, hell, he and Johnny had even done it once, (It was Johnny’s graduation party; Johnny was drunk, Chittaphon wasn’t. It was good while it lasted but kinda sucked after the fact, seeing as he remembered something so important that Johnny was too intoxicated to even take in. Whatever. He’s over it now) but that doesn’t mean it’s not a shock, because he’d never thought that Johnny had actually seen him in that way.

He wants to. God, he wants nothing more than to make out with Johnny Seo at eighteen years old while Clueless plays in the background but it’s going to fuck with his heart and he really doesn’t want this to be a one time thing. But Johnny looks so good with his tight shirt and hair brushed off of his forehead, with the cheap lamp in the corner and the flatscreen illuminating him, with his pretty eyes and kissable lips and sharp jaw and everything about him, Chittaphon wants to more than he wants anything else.

“Are you just saying that because you want to shut me up?” Maybe if he makes light of the situation then it won’t hurt so much if things go bad.

“Maybe a little,” Johnny tells him, “but it’s partially because I’ve been thinking about you a lot and partially because you look really pretty right now.”

Fuck, Johnny’s called him pretty before but never in this context. It feels so much different now, when Johnny’s staring at him like this, when the hand on his shoulder is playing with the hood of his sweater. Fuck it feels _good._

“Do it,” Chittaphon orders him. “Kiss me, do it.” So Johnny does. He turns Chittaphon and pulls him into his lap, grabs his chin, kisses him like he means it. Oh man, holy fuck, Chittaphon’s brain is going haywire. Turns out, Sober Johnny is a much, _much_ better kisser than Drunk Johnny. So much better. Johnny kinda tastes like pizza but also like strawberries and also like the cigarettes he’d gone out on his balcony to smoke five minutes into Sleepless in Seattle. It probably shouldn’t be, and Chittaphon probably tastes like pizza and gummy bears and orange juice, but it’s so fucking good that he can’t even describe it.

The kiss gets deeper; Johnny’s hands wander his waist and Chittaphon finds his own tangled in Johnny’s soft hair, drawing him closer, closer, closer. Johnny’s fingertips are rough against the skin of his stomach but it feels so good to Chittaphon, finally, finally having Johnny like this, holding him, kissing him, it makes his head spin.

They kiss for what feels like forever until Johnny’s blindly reaching for the TV remote and turning it off, lifting Chittaphon and heading towards the bedroom. When he breaks the kiss for a second to see where he’s going, Chittaphon looks to the clock on the wall. It’s eleven past one, he should be tired, because he’s been up since seven, but then Johnny kisses him again and it’s like he’s just drank three pots of coffee. Johnny sets him down on the bed and crawls over him, holding himself on his elbows, kisses Chittaphon languidly, easily, like it comes naturally. They kiss until they’re too tired to even peck each other any more. Chittaphon and Johnny both kick off their jeans and as soon as they get under the covers, he’s asleep against Johnny’s broad chest.

  
  


Johnny shows up to his place at twelve fifty-five on the dot. Chittaphon had woken up alone, and that had really sucked, because the last thing you really want after having a half an hour make out session with what was your best friend is to wake up in an empty bed to an empty phone with no note, but still having their smell lingering on your clothes. It really, really fucking sucked. For a good hour and a half Chittaphon had thought that maybe Johnny hadn’t meant it, that he should just take the train home, but he figures that he’s in Johnny’s apartment, he’s bound to show up eventually.

When he does show up, he rushes over to the couch and kisses Chittaphon like he had last night, but it doesn’t last nearly as long as it had last night. He tastes of peach candies and iced coffee and cigarette smoke, but it’s still so good.

“I had a class,” Johnny explains as he breaks away, throws his bag on the armchair, tosses his jean jacket over the back. And yeah, that makes perfect sense, because Johnny’s in his second year of college studying fine arts, the reason is now clear as to why he wasn’t home. A warning still would’ve been nice for Chittaphon’s low self-esteem, though. “You were asleep and my phone was dead and I was already late so I didn’t have time to leave a note, I’m sorry.” It’s so weird. Johnny never apologizes for anything unless he absolutely has to, he’s just not good at apologies, but he’s doing it without Chittaphon even stating that he was upset. It’s so _weird_.

“No, it’s fine, it’s just-- why are you apologizing?”

“Because I feel bad that you probably felt like a fuck and run even though this is my apartment and we didn’t fuck,” Johnny explains, and it’s true, Chittaphon did kind of feel like that at first, but it wore away as quickly as it had come up. “So I’m sorry for leaving.”

“You never apologize, fuck this is so weird what happened to my Johnny Seo-” he’s cut off when Johnny plops next to him on the couch and kisses him again. Fuck, he’s kissed Johnny three times in the past twenty-four hours; the thought is hard for his brain to begin to comprehend.

“I’m your Johnny Seo. Am I allowed to keep doing that?”

“Do I look like I’m, complaining, John?” Chittaphon asks. The sun is pouring through the opened curtains and it gives the whole room a golden glow like it’s a painting. It makes Johnny’s eyes shine golden too, flecks of aurum in his irises, sun casting shadows on his cheeks.

“I think I love you,” Johnny tells him, and it’s the first time Chittaphon’s ever heard him sound scared.

“I think I love you too, Johnny.”

“That’s the thing,” Johnny starts, looking absolutely _petrified_ , at Chittaphon doesn’t know why. “I’m not good at this kind of thing,” he says, “I’m not really sure how this works. Ever relationship I’ve ever been in has ended poorly and if we start up a relationship, I don’t want us to end like that, if at all. I just, I don’t know how to do this.”

“And you think I do?” Chittaphon asks, “what kind of eighteen year old love experts do you know?” It’s rhetorical, and Johnny knows that, so he just sits back and looks at Chittaphon. “I’ve only ever been in love once, I don’t know shit about love. But we’ll learn together, John. That’s the thing about it, I think, you learn as you go, like riding a bike. If you fall down, you fall down, but then you get right back up and try again, because that’s just what you’ve gotta do if you want to be a pro. You hear me?”

Johnny smiles at him. “And you say you’re no love expert.”

“Was that good? I’m pretty sure I stole that from somewhere.”

“And you ruined it.”

“Look here, Seo. My point is that we can try and learn and go through the the ups and downs together because that’s what people do. We don’t have to rush into anything, okay? I think that’s where a lot of people probably go wrong.” Johnny nods his head. They both know it’ll be less than perfect for the first while, but they also know that if they try and try, they’re bound to get things right eventually.

“I think you’re right,” he says, “where should we start?”

“I think you should start by kissing me again,” Chittaphon says. Johnny has no problem in doing exactly as told.  


**Author's Note:**

> [twt](http://twitter.com/hfkyounghyun)


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